• 4/27/2006
  • Louisville, KY
  • Laura Ungar
  • The Courier-Journal (courier-journal.com)

University of Louisville researcher leads campaign

An apple a day may be a good thing, but a University of Louisville researcher argues that berries could be the real key to staving off cancer.

Ramesh Gupta is leading a research effort that has shown certain berries may help protect against two of the nation’s most deadly cancers: breast cancer and lung cancer.

“We’ve been told we need to eat more fruits and vegetables,” said Gupta, who is based at the James Graham Brown Cancer Center. “But berries certainly seem to come to the top of the list. ”

Gupta, who presented his breast-cancer findings to the American Association of Cancer Researchers in Washington, D.C., this month, found that eating antioxidant-rich blueberries and black raspberries reduced the size of breast tumors by 60 percent to 70 percent among rats exposed to estrogen.

His lung-cancer research, given at an earlier meeting of the association, showed that a mixture of four berries — strawberries, blueberries, black raspberries and blackberries — reduced the incidence and number of lung tumors by 30 percent to 35 percent in mice exposed to cigarette smoke. He is planning human tests in the next two years.

The research provides hope to people such as 71-year-old Harvey Plaschke of Louisville, whose wife, Amparo, died of lung cancer three years ago, at age 68. A nonsmoker, she had suffered pneumonia twice since 2000, then developed a persistent cough. She died shortly before their 40th anniversary.

“There needs to be a whole lot more research. Anything that’s being done is wonderful,” Plaschke said, adding that it’s especially relevant in Kentucky, which has the nation’s highest lung-cancer death rate.

Gupta’s findings are part of a growing body of berry-based research that gives credence to the idea that nature may provide answers to some of the most complex medical problems.

Last year researchers from the University of Kentucky and Ohio State University announced they would start testing a gel made of freeze-dried black raspberries for the prevention of oral cancer.

Other research has shown that black raspberries may prevent cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.

And James Joseph, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher based at Tufts University in Boston, has published findings about the protective qualities of berries against age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

One advantage of berries, researchers said, is that they don’t produce side effects. So Gupta doesn’t hesitate to put his research into practice, eating lots of berries and running frozen ones through a juicer to make a dessert he calls “berry smoosh.”

“Can you OD on them? No,” Joseph said. “That’s the beauty of berries. You can’t hurt yourself with them.”

Berries’ compounds key

Researchers say various types of berries contain different concentrations of antioxidant compounds — and diets rich in antioxidants can protect against harmful molecules called free radicals, which people are less able to fight off as they age.

“The compounds in the berries can turn on signals that are beneficial and turn off signals that are deleterious,” Joseph said.

Gupta said he’s not sure exactly which compounds, or combinations of compounds, are responsible for the results he’s seen.

In the breast-cancer research, his team exposed rats to natural estrogen, then fed some a regular diet and gave others blueberries, black raspberries or ellagic acid in doses equivalent to about a pound of fresh berries a day in humans. Ellagic acid is one of the compounds found in the berries.

After six months, tumor incidence was the same among the groups. But black raspberries and ellagic acid each reduced the number of tumors by 40 percent to 50 percent and tumor size by 60 percent to 70 percent. Blueberries reduced the size of tumors by 50 percent but didn’t affect the number of tumors.

Gupta — whose team receives federal but no commercial funding — said his is the first report on the effectiveness of berries against estrogen-related breast cancer. Joseph agreed he had not heard of others doing the same research.

For the lung-cancer experiments, Gupta’s team exposed a particular type of cancer-prone mice to cigarette smoke for five months. They then compared those fed a regular diet and those given a mixture of strawberries, blueberries, black raspberries and blackberries.

Gupta is working with Dr. Goetz Kloecker, director of the Thoracic Oncology Clinic at the Brown Cancer Center, to develop a plan for human lung-cancer trials.

Targeting oral cancer

The University of Kentucky’s berry research addresses another tobacco-related cancer that hits Kentucky hard: oral cancer.

The black raspberry gel was developed by researchers at UK’s Center for Pharmaceutical Science, working with Ohio researchers.

Under their study, which involves 20 patients with oral lesions, surgeons remove part of the lesions to analyze them, and the patients then apply the gel four times a day for six weeks. Then, the rest of the lesion is removed, and researchers study whether the berries have helped.

Gupta said it should not be surprising that berries are proving so beneficial — they’ve been considered a folk medicine for thousands of years in many cultures. The modern world is just finally catching up, he said. “The message is getting out.”